au pair scam?

i just recently made a profile with this aupair website and i got an email back from a family, im just scared its a scam...

Dear XXXXXXXXXX, Your name is not necessary - Michelle

It made us very happy ) to see that you have added us to your favorites on newaupair.com. So, I now write to you to establish personal contact. I and my family, we are very much interested in you becoming our next au pair girl. You seem to be a very good fit to our family.
Your description seems to perfectly describe exactly what we are looking for! But of course we do have some additional questions for you:

* Our current au pair girl is going back to Australia in January. We are looking for someone who ideally can start in late January/beginning of Feburary 2010. Would that be possible for you?
* Would you like to stay for at least 12 months?
* Can you please give us some details about your childcare experiences, especially with newborns and toddlers? Our two little girls are 4 month and 2,5 years old.
* Could you please send us your references?
* I really would like to talk to you over the phone. Do you have skype or what's your phone number?

We're very much interested and would love to hear back from you. You can ask me any questions to get to know me any my family better If you'd like to I can sent you the email address of our current au pair girl to get in touch with her.

Here's the link to our family profile on newaupair.com: http://www.newaupair.com/family_profile ... obs=298184

Thank you and hope to hear back from you soon...
Claudia, Leni, Kira & Hartmut

Quotes added - Michelle

Welcome to Scamwarners.

You say that you received this by e-mail. Could you post the e-mail address it came from, preferably with the full/extended headers ?

Au-pair scammers normally operate by finding an excuse to send you a (fake) cheque, and then ask you to return part or all of the amount by Western Union in the hope your bank doesn't notice the counterfeit before your money has been sent and collected.

Another less common rouse is for a family to ask the you to deal direct with their own (bogus) travel agent. The agency may seem genuine and ask all kinds of travel details and then request a down-payment to be sent. This again is a complex scam and you should not be taken in. You will not hear from the agent, the family or your money again.

That initial e-mail doesn't indicate to me a scam, but as Michelle has requested, we can make a better diagnosis with headers.

As it stands, I would advise that you can continue down this route. As more e-mails come from the "family" then we can better tell what we're dealing with. It seems naturally written, and if it's a script, the whole internet doesn't hold any other reference to it.

Still approach with caution, as it's always better to be safe.

I also received a similar email from a Carl Rudolf from newaupair.com. He claimed to be an HR Manager for a company called Gallery Group UK, and after researching the comany, I found it to be fake. Any web developer can see that this website is badly designed, and no oil company would have a website of such poor quality.

He claimed to pay me 520GBP per week and had a son called Michael. These people are dangerous, something must be done about them!!

Sincerely
Jody

Welcome writershand, glad you saw through the scam quickly.

One thing we can do is get fake websites taken down. If you can provide anything you have been given about the website, including any emails he sent you from that domain or referencing the site, we can research the site and if it is indeed fake, get the proper reports submitted to get it closed down.

Hi Dotti

How do I forward the emails from the sender to this post?

If you simply open the mail, then copy and past the entire contents into a new post in this thread that will do for now.

Please be sure to edit out your own personal details by replacing them like this >>"XXXXXXXX"<< before submitting the post.

Is this it?
http://gallerygroup-uk.net/contact_us.html

Creation Date........ 2009-09-18
Registration Date.... 2009-09-18
Expiry Date.......... 2010-09-18

The one year registration and free redirect 4470 numbers say it's a scam, but as already stated, we need the email pointing to it.

Remarks delivered to the Commonwealth Club of London
San Francisco, London
June 6, 2007

I can't recall a fake site being used for an au-pair scam before. One isn't needed for domestic employment. Oil jobs yes, but not au-pairs.

Good find Arnold .. I was just looking at the same site as you.

@writershand When you post the suspicious e-mail it would help us if you could include the FULL or EXPANDED headers.

If you are unsure how to do this, please let us know which e-mail service YOU use (ie Yahoo, Hotmail etc..) and someone will be along to help you.

Hi Guys

Thanks for the all the help, although the strange thing is, the letter he attached about the family and their son, including the website of the oil company, were all in a pdf document, which for me was strange. If you're going to email an aupair, why not just include all your notes in the email, why another letter format?

He also included photos of the family, but the image quality of the photos are so poor, they look like they were taken 10 years ago, which is impossible, since the kid is only 5 years old. In the letter he invites me to check out the website which is weird. Both he and his wife Vanessa work at the company Gallery Group UK.

This is all I could copy:

Dear Aupair,
We are an American family working and living in the United Kingdom, We have a son that is 4 years
old and we looking for an Au Pair from any Country that can speak English and is willing to stay with
us for a minimum of 6 - 12 Months.
We saw your profile on www.newaupair.com and we decided to contact you, to discuss the
possibilities of having you as our aupair in the spirit of cultural exchange. We’re a laid-back and happy
family.
I work for GALLERY GROUP U.K; a Multinational Oil Company located in London. I am the HR
Manager for International Recruitment and my wife Vanessa is also working in the same firm with me
as an Administrative Executive.
We have a son called Michael, Michael goes to school 5 days a week from 8.45am to 2pm and we all
love the outdoors. You can visit our company's website www.gallerygroup-uk.net
This effectively means that we mainly hang out in the garden at home or sometimes go out on day
trips to just about anywhere; beaches, country parks, adventure parks, activity farms, seaside towns,
forest walks… you just name it!
Michael is very easy going and as such you can get along with him easily. Your accommodation would
be fully furnished and we would be paying you 520 GBP weekly throughout the duration of your stay
with us.
We shall make available a vehicle for you to use if you can drive, We would also pay your travel
expenses. Our only son means so much to us hence we are offering this salary so that you can put in
your best while taking care of him.
We would like to know when you can be available because we would like an aupair that can start as
soon as possible. Please e mail us if you would like to discuss the position with us, while you send
your pictures and introduction about yourself.
Attached herewith this email is our family picture for you to see our wonderful family, you can You
can reach us on any of these numbers; +44 703-195-4442, +44 702-406-8997, +44 702-309-7561
We look forward to hearing from you soon!
Lots of Love,
Mr. Carl Rudolf
FOR: RUDOLF FAMILY
HR MANAGER
GALLERY GROUP U.K
WEBSITE: www.gallerygroup-uk.net
OFFICIAL EMAIL: [email protected]

That was the entire pdf document...what do you guys think?

Thank you for providing this additional information.

Scammers will often include documents in their scams, sometimes pdf, sometimes in word.

It can be hard to work out how scammers think at times but I would presume the attachments make it harder for them to be posted or searched on and likely the scammer believes it looks more legitimate to do it that way.

thanks so much guys for all your help in this. it is comforting to know that there is a group of people out there willing to share their experiences in this regard, to help others keep out of harms way. thanks, The Writer.

Never a problem

You can help us yourself simply by telling your family and friends about internet fraud, the more people who are aware of internet scams the harder it will be for scammers to steal.

Honestly, i was so suprised after read one of your posts about the scam. This afternoon i received an email, and its totally the same email with the postn only the name that different. Since beginning when i read his email, i think there's something wrong. I still reply his email and this evening i received again. Even he sent some photos to me and he gives an email easterngroups-travel.com ( agency). Because i don't really believe this guy, so i try to find the agencys address, and i couln't find it until i found this web.

Welcome schoen

We are pleased that scamwarners has helped you identify a scam.

It would be useful if you could post an e-mail that you have received from the criminal.

I would like to know if he refers you to a web site containing similar words to "easterngroups-travel", or is he simply using an e-mail address such as this one that has been used in the past by a scammer
>> [email protected] << ?